They make their money off the misery of the people/Yo pran mizè moun yo pou yo ka fè kapital yo

10062010

Before January 12, the population of Cité Soleil lived in extreme misery. After January 12, it got even harder. Cité Soleil is the place everyone comes to make money. The NGOs come here to make money. They take people’s misery in order to make capital. I’ve been living in Cité Soleil since ’77, I know all the problems that the Cité has gone through since then….Cité Soleil is a place where a lot of money is spent but nothing ever happens. It is the place where everyone comes to make money, to get rich. After January 12, it got even worse. After January 12, everyone mobilized, the international community mobilized. Myself, I thought that things were going to change. Au contraire! I see things getting more difficult. I see there’s a lot of food distribution happening, I see that. At the beginning, it went well, but after a while things start getting looser, people started making money off it. When you look at it, what hurts the most is that people from Cité Soleil have been working to have political representation, to have people who will represent them at the state level. But when you see how things have turned out, that it’s those same people who are turning a profit. Think about it, really think about it – when a person isthe premye sitwayen (first citizen) in a community, there are a lot of things that person shouldn’t do. Then I see lots of people, the population, coming to a place to buy food cards. There are people who took those cards and made a fortune with them. They bought cars with them, they bought motorcycles. They were selling a single card for 100 or 150 Haitian dollars [$13-19 US]. Something that was meant to help the people, and they were selling them, they were selling them. I think this deserves to be changed. This is something we need to be talking about. This is something that cannot be hidden. OK, we must do an inquiry to find the people who are creating disorder. All the population would know. Talk to the people to identify those people, and they’ll find them very quickly. Myself, I believe – I give my promise – I blame the majistra for all of this, because it’s they who are selling the cards, and you see all these people standing to buy cards from them. Well, that’s something that hurts a lot, as a leader who has been working on the ground for a long time, and people are in misery, in need. I think this is something that needs to be changed.

And another thing – now in this country, NGOs are coming up like mushrooms. And everywhere you go you see these NGOs, you may not know this, but it’s those same NGOs that are forcing people to turn a profit, so they can justify all the money they make. My god! People are sleeping in mud. People are sleeping on garbage. When it rains, people don’t have anywhere to sleep. I think that the most important thing now is a public housing project within Cité Soleil. That is fundamental….I think everyone, the whole international community, everyone who wants to help this zone, must sit with the leaders of the zone, with the people of the zone, listen to the community first off, so that they know how to start working here.